Buch lesen: «The Conjure-Man Dies: A Harlem Mystery»

CHAPTER I

ENCOUNTERING the bright-lighted gaiety of Harlem’s Seventh Avenue, the frigid midwinter night seemed to relent a little. She had given Battery Park a chill stare and she would undoubtedly freeze the Bronx. But here in this mid-realm of rhythm and laughter she seemed to grow warmer and friendlier, observing, perhaps, that those who dwelt here were mysteriously dark like herself.

Of this favour the Avenue promptly took advantage. Sidewalks barren throughout the cold white day now sprouted life like fields in spring. Along swung boys in camels’ hair beside girls in bunny and muskrat; broad, flat heels clacked, high narrow ones clicked, reluctantly leaving the disgorging theatres or eagerly seeking the voracious dance halls. There was loud jest and louder laughter and the frequent uplifting of merry voices in the moment’s most popular song:

‘I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you,

I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you.

What is it that you’ve got

Makes my wife think you so hot?

Oh you dog—I’ll be glad when you’re gone!’

But all of black Harlem was not thus gay and bright. Any number of dark, chill, silent side streets declined the relenting night’s favour. 130th Street, for example, east of Lenox Avenue, was at this moment cold, still, and narrowly forbidding; one glanced down this block and was glad one’s destination lay elsewhere. Its concentrated gloom was only intensified by an occasional spangle of electric light, splashed ineffectually against the blackness, or by the unearthly pallor of the sky, into which a wall of dwellings rose to hide the moon.

Among the houses in this looming row, one reared a little taller and gaunter than its fellows, so that the others appeared to shrink from it and huddle together in the shadow on either side. The basement of this house was quite black; its first floor, high above the sidewalk and approached by a long greystone stoop, was only dimly lighted; its second floor was lighted more dimly still, while the third, which was the top, was vacantly dark again like the basement. About the place hovered an oppressive silence, as if those who entered here were warned beforehand not to speak above a whisper. There was, like a footnote, in one of the two first-floor windows to the left of the entrance a black-on-white sign reading:

SAMUEL CROUCH, UNDERTAKER.

On the narrow panel to the right of the doorway the silver letters of another sign obscurely glittered on an onyx background:

N. FRIMBO, PSYCHIST.

Between the two signs receded the high, narrow vestibule, terminating in a pair of tall glass-panelled doors. Glass curtains, tightly stretched in vertical folds, dimmed the already too-subdued illumination beyond.

It was about an hour before midnight that one of the doors rattled and flew open, revealing the bareheaded, short, round figure of a young man who manifestly was profoundly agitated and in a great hurry. Without closing the door behind him, he rushed down the stairs, sped straight across the street, and in a moment was frantically pushing the bell of the dwelling directly opposite. A tall, slender, light-skinned man of obviously habitual composure answered the excited summons.

‘Is—is you him?’ stammered the agitated one, pointing to a sign labelled ‘John Archer, M.D.’

‘Yes—I’m Dr Archer.’

‘Well, arch on over here, will you, doc?’ urged the caller. ‘Sump’m done happened to Frimbo.’

‘Frimbo? The fortune teller?’

‘Step on it, will you, doc?’

Shortly, the physician, bag in hand, was hurrying up the greystone stoop behind his guide. They passed through the still open door into a hallway and mounted a flight of thickly carpeted stairs.

At the head of the staircase a tall, lank, angular figure awaited them. To this person the short, round, black, and by now quite breathless guide panted, ‘I got one, boy! This here’s the doc from ’cross the street. Come on, doc. Right in here.’

Dr Archer, in passing, had an impression of a young man as long and lean as himself, of a similarly light complexion except for a profusion of dark brown freckles, and of a curiously scowling countenance that glowered from either ill humour or apprehension. The doctor rounded the banister head and strode behind his pilot toward the front of the house along the upper hallway, midway of which, still following the excited short one, he turned and swung into a room that opened into the hall at that point. The tall fellow brought up the rear.

Within the room the physician stopped, looking about in surprise. The chamber was almost entirely in darkness. The walls appeared to be hung from ceiling to floor with black velvet drapes. Even the ceiling was covered, the heavy folds of cloth converging from the four corners to gather at a central point above, from which dropped a chain suspending the single strange source of light, a device which hung low over a chair behind a large desk-like table, yet left these things and indeed most of the room unlighted. This was because, instead of shedding its radiance downward and outward as would an ordinary shaded droplight, this mechanism focused a horizontal beam upon a second chair on the opposite side of the table. Clearly the person who used the chair beneath the odd spotlight could remain in relative darkness while the occupant of the other chair was brightly illuminated.

‘There he is—jes’ like Jinx found him.’

And now in the dark chair beneath the odd lamp the doctor made out a huddled, shadowy form. Quickly he stepped forward.

‘Is this the only light?’

‘Only one I’ve seen.’

Dr Archer procured a flashlight from his bag and swept its faint beam over the walls and ceiling. Finding no sign of another lighting fixture, he directed the instrument in his hand toward the figure in the chair and saw a bare black head inclined limply sidewise, a flaccid countenance with open mouth and fixed eyes staring from under drooping lids.

‘Can’t do much in here. Anybody up front?’

‘Yes, suh. Two ladies.’

‘Have to get him outside. Let’s see. I know. Downstairs. Down in Crouch’s. There’s a sofa. You men take hold and get him down there. This way.’

There was some hesitancy. ‘Mean us, doc?’

‘Of course. Hurry. He doesn’t look so hot now.’

‘I ain’t none too warm, myself,’ murmured the short one. But he and his friend obeyed, carrying out their task with a dispatch born of distaste. Down the stairs they followed Dr Archer, and into the undertaker’s dimly lighted front room.

‘Oh, Crouch!’ called the doctor. ‘Mr Crouch!’

‘That “mister” ought to get him.’

But there was no answer. ‘Guess he’s out. That’s right—put him on the sofa. Push that other switch by the door. Good.’

Dr Archer inspected the supine figure as he reached into his bag. ‘Not so good,’ he commented. Beneath his black satin robe the patient wore ordinary clothing—trousers, vest, shirt, collar and tie. Deftly the physician bared the chest; with one hand he palpated the heart area while with the other he adjusted the ear-pieces of his stethoscope. He bent over, placed the bell of his instrument on the motionless dark chest, and listened a long time. He removed the instrument, disconnected first one, then the other, rubber tube at their junction with the bell, blew vigorously through them in turn, replaced them, and repeated the operation of listening. At last he stood erect.

‘Not a twitch,’ he said.

‘Long gone, huh?’

‘Not so long. Still warm. But gone.’

The short young man looked at his scowling freckled companion.

‘What’d I tell you?’ he whispered. ‘Was I right or wasn’t I?’

The tall one did not answer but watched the doctor. The doctor put aside his stethoscope and inspected the patient’s head more closely, the parted lips and half-open eyes. He extended a hand and with his extremely long fingers gently palpated the scalp. ‘Hello,’ he said. He turned the far side of the head toward him and looked first at that side, then at his fingers.

‘Wh-what?’

‘Blood in his hair,’ announced the physician. He procured a gauze dressing from his bag, wiped his moist fingers, thoroughly sponged and reinspected the wound. Abruptly he turned to the two men, whom until now he had treated quite impersonally. Still imperturbably, but incisively, in the manner of lancing an abscess, he asked, ‘Who are you two gentlemen?’

‘Why—uh—this here’s Jinx Jenkins, doc. He’s my buddy, see? Him and me—’

‘And you—if I don’t presume?’

‘Me? I’m Bubber Brown—’

‘Well, how did this happen, Mr Brown?’

‘’Deed I don’ know, doc. What you mean—is somebody killed him?’

‘You don’t know?’ Dr Archer regarded the pair curiously a moment, then turned back to examine further. From an instrument case he took a probe and proceeded to explore the wound in the dead man’s scalp. ‘Well—what do you know about it, then?’ he asked, still probing. ‘Who found him?’

‘Jinx,’ answered the one who called himself Bubber. ‘We jes’ come here to get this Frimbo’s advice ’bout a little business project we thought up. Jinx went in to see him. I waited in the waitin’ room. Presently Jinx come bustin’ out pop-eyed and beckoned to me. I went back with him—and there was Frimbo, jes’ like you found him. We didn’t even know he was over the river.’

‘Did he fall against anything and strike his head?’

‘No, suh, doc.’ Jinx became articulate. ‘He didn’t do nothin’ the whole time I was in there. Nothin’ but talk. He tol’ me who I was and what I wanted befo’ I could open my mouth. Well, I said that I knowed that much already and that I come to find out sump’m I didn’t know. Then he went on talkin’, tellin’ me plenty. He knowed his stuff all right. But all of a sudden he stopped talkin’ and mumbled sump’m ’bout not bein’ able to see. Seem like he got scared, and he say, “Frimbo, why don’t you see?” Then he didn’t say no more. He sound’ so funny I got scared myself and jumped up and grabbed that light and turned it on him—and there he was.’

‘M-m.’

Dr Archer, pursuing his examination, now indulged in what appeared to be a characteristic habit: he began to talk as he worked, to talk rather absently and wordily on a matter which at first seemed inapropos.

‘I,’ said he, ‘am an exceedingly curious fellow.’ Deftly, delicately, with half-closed eyes, he was manipulating his probe. ‘Questions are forever popping into my head. For example, which of you two gentlemen, if either, stands responsible for the expenses of medical attention in this unfortunate instance?’

‘Mean who go’n’ pay you?’

‘That,’ smiled the doctor, ‘makes it rather a bald question.’

Bubber grinned understandingly.

‘Well here’s one with hair on it, doc,’ he said. ‘Who got the medical attention?’

‘M-m,’ murmured the doctor. ‘I was afraid of that. Not,’ he added, ‘that I am moved by mercenary motives. Oh, not at all. But if I am not to be paid in the usual way, in coin of the realm, then of course I must derive my compensation in some other form of satisfaction. Which, after all, is the end of all our getting and spending, is it not?’

‘Oh, sho’,’ agreed Bubber.

‘Now this case’—the doctor dropped the gauze dressing into his bag—‘even robbed of its material promise, still bids well to feed my native curiosity—if not my cellular protoplasm. You follow me, of course?’

‘With my tongue hangin’ out,’ said Bubber.

But that part of his mind which was directing this discourse did not give rise to the puzzled expression on the physician’s lean, light-skinned countenance as he absently moistened another dressing with alcohol, wiped off his fingers and his probe, and stood up again.

‘We’d better notify the police,’ he said. ‘You men’—he looked at them again—‘you men call up the precinct.’

They promptly started for the door.

‘No—you don’t have to go out. The cops, you see’—he was almost confidential—‘the cops will want to question all of us. Mr Crouch has a phone back there. Use that.’

They exchanged glances but obeyed.

‘I’ll be thinking over my findings.’

Through the next room they scuffled and into the back of the long first-floor suite. There they abruptly came to a halt and again looked at each other, but now for an entirely different reason. Along one side of this room, hidden from view until their entrance, stretched a long narrow table draped with a white sheet that covered an unmistakably human form. There was not much light. The two young men stood quite still.

‘Seem like it’s—occupied,’ murmured Bubber.

‘Another one,’ mumbled Jinx.

‘Where’s the phone?’

‘Don’t ask me. I got both eyes full.’

‘There ’tis—on that desk. Go on—use it.’

‘Use it yo’ own black self,’ suggested Jinx. ‘I’m goin’ back.’

‘No you ain’t. Come on. We use it together.’

‘All right. But if that whosis says “Howdy” tell it I said “Goo’by.”’

‘And where the hell you think I’ll be if it says “Howdy”?’

‘What a place to have a telephone!’

‘Step on it, slow motion.’

‘Hello!—Hello!’ Bubber rattled the hook. ‘Hey operator! Operator!’

‘My Gawd,’ said Jinx, ‘is the phone dead too?’

‘Operator—gimme the station—quick … Pennsylvania? No ma’am—New York—Harlem—listen, lady, not railroad. Police. Please, ma’am … Hello—hey—send a flock o’ cops around here—Frimbo’s—the fortune teller’s—yea—Thirteen West 130th—yea—somebody done put that thing on him! … Yea—O.K.’

Hurriedly they returned to the front room where Dr Archer was pacing back and forth, his hands thrust into his pockets, his brow pleated into troubled furrows.

‘They say hold everything, doc. Be right over.’

‘Good.’ The doctor went on pacing.

Jinx and Bubber surveyed the recumbent form. Said Bubber, ‘If he could keep folks from dyin’, how come he didn’t keep hisself from it?’

‘Reckon he didn’t have time to put no spell on hisself,’ Jinx surmised.

‘No,’ returned Bubber grimly. ‘But somebody else had time to put one on him. I knowed sump’m was comin’. I told you. First time I seen death on the moon since I been grown. And they’s two mo’ yet.’

‘How you reckon it happened?’

‘You askin’ me?’ Bubber said. ‘You was closer to him than I was.’

‘It was plumb dark all around. Somebody could’a’ snook up behind him and crowned him while he was talkin’ to me. But I didn’t hear a sound. Say—I better catch air. This thing’s puttin’ me on the well-known spot, ain’t it?’

‘All right, dumbo. Run away and prove you done it. Wouldn’t that be a bright move?’

Dr Archer said, ‘The wisest thing for you men to do is stay here and help solve this puzzle. You’d be called in anyway—you found the body, you see. Running away looks as if you were—well—running away.’

‘What’d I tell you?’ said Bubber.

‘All right,’ growled Jinx. ‘But I can’t see how they could blame anybody for runnin’ away from this place. Graveyard’s a playground side o’ this.’